Mobile App Features: Gap in Popularity and Investment

ByHoma Zaryouni ·

23 July 2014

L2’s Intelligence Report: Mobile & Tablet found a gap in mobile app investment and reception. More than 60% of the brands are active on iOS and 45% are present on Android, even though consumers spend less than 10% of their total time on mobile devices on non-game and non-social apps.

The report also found a discrepancy between investment in app features and their popularity. For example, gamification was the most common feature among top-rated apps (found in 4 of the top 10), but just 5% of brand apps had the functionality. Another common feature of the top ten brand apps was device pairing, which just 4% of brands had invested in.

Camera utilization investment was on par with the response: 27% of apps have the feature as well as three of the seven top-rated brand apps released in the past year. Overall, apps that were more successful offered what mobile sites could not: camera utilization, accelerometer access, device pairing.